A PSAP (Public Safety Answering Point) is a public safety agency or facility designated by a governmental authority to act as a police, fire or medical services response center. Its function is to expedite emergency 9-1-1 calls by determining the nature of calls for emergency assistance and to connect the caller to the appropriate police, fire, medical or Coast Guard responder agency to provide emergency services at the location of the telephone that is used to call 9-1-1 to request said emergency services.
In the United States, Canada and Mexico dialing 9-1-1 quickly and automatically places the caller in direct contact with a 9-1-1 PSAP call taker having jurisdiction over the location of the caller telephone. There are over six thousand (6000) different PSAP's in the United States each having jurisdiction over a specific geographical area. All 6,000 PSAP's answer to the same 9-1-1 emergency number. By FCC mandate it is the responsibility of the telephone company network to insure that a 9-1-1 call is automatically routed to a PSAP with jurisdiction over the geographic location from which the 9-1-1 call is placed.
To accomplish this automatic 9-1-1 call routing based on caller location the telephone companies maintain a data-base of telephone numbers linked to the physical address of a caller landline telephone and to the telephone numbers of a dedicated 9-1-1 trunk telephone line connecting each PSAP to the telephone company network.
Cellular telephones are nomadic in nature allowing cellular calls to originate from any location. To route cellular calls to a PSAP with jurisdiction over the location from which the cellular call originates telephone companies use the GPS location of the phone or the location of the cell tower through which the cell phone is placing the 9-1-1 call and a data base of PSAP 9-1-1 trunk line telephone numbers linked to the GPS or cell tower location to determine the correct PSAP to which the 9-1-1 call needs to be routed.
The telephone company network knows the telephone number of every cell phone connected to each cell tower on its network. It knows the location of each cell tower on its network and maintains a data base of PSAP telephone numbers of PSAP's having jurisdiction over each cell tower location. The telephone company network is therefore able to correctly route a 9-1-1 call to the correct PSAP to handle the call.
This automatic 9-1-1 call routing capability is critically important in relation to residential and commercial alarm monitoring companies and to private persons using prior-art alarm systems designed to call or text them upon detection of predetermined alarm events such as a fire or burglary event detection. If the person or alarm monitoring company is located in a geographic PSAP jurisdiction different than the alarm system, as is most often the case, a person or alarm monitoring company dialing 9-1-1 to request emergency services at the location of the alarm system will be connected to a PSAP having jurisdiction over the location from which the person, or alarm monitoring company, made the 9-1-1 call rather than with a PSAP with jurisdiction over the location of the alarm system.
Because of this automatic 9-1-1 routing based on the location of the caller telephone prior-art alarm monitoring companies are forced to spend large amounts of money creating and maintaining proprietary 10-digit administrative PSAP telephone number data bases linked to geographical locations and jurisdiction boundaries for each of the six thousand (6000) or more PSAP's in the United States. These 10-digit telephone number databases allow alarm monitoring companies to place standard type telephone calls to the non-9-1-1 10-digit administrative telephone number of a PSAP having jurisdiction over the location of a monitored alarm system. The problem with this solution is that since this call is not a real E9-1-1 call it is not afforded the priority that a real 9-1-1 call would receive and ALI (Automatic Location Information) is not supported. Also a private person receiving a direct auto-dialed alarm notification that is sent to his personal telephone by an alarm system auto-dialer does not normally have access to such a PSAP 10-digit data bases to determine the proper PSAP telephone number to call to request emergency services at the location of the alarm system.
The present invention provides a solution for this problem by replacing the alarm monitoring company with the alarm system owner himself and routing the 9-1-1 call to a PSAP with jurisdiction over the location of the VASS as a 3-party conference call that is initiated by the VASS. This 3-party call can be established using telephone company provided conference calling services or it can be established by establishing a first (1st) call connection with a VASS transceiver A and a person and a user commanded second (2nd) call connection with a VASS transceiver B and 9-1-1 with the VASS bridging the two call connections so that the person in the first call connection with transceiver A is able to tell the 9-1-1 call-taker in the second call connection with transceiver B the reason for the call and to request emergency services at the location of the VASS.
In summary: The present Invention takes advantage of E9-1-1 automatic call routing and 3-party conference calling to establish a call connection between a person and a PSAP with jurisdiction over the location of a Video Alarm Security System (VASS) protecting a property. The VASS can be protecting a fixed location commercial or residential property in one embodiment or it can be protecting a mobile asset such as a boat, vehicle, aircraft, trailer or shipping container in another embodiment.